The following article is an excerpt from Make Me Like Jesus by Michael Phillips.
The prayer of Christlikeness is not a prayer that can be answered by fiat, with a magic wand. How does God answer it?
He answers through our willingness—our willingness to become sons and daughters of self-denying obedience. God cannot effect the transformation without the bowed head, bent knees, and empty hands of our own obedience.
When we pray, “Father, make me like Jesus,” we must be clear that it is not a prayer God can answer without our taking an equal share in the process.
We are not made like Jesus, we must become like Jesus.
How does the change take place? Who is responsible for it?
It comes as we yield our human nature to the Father, exactly as Jesus did. It comes as, one by one, little bits of the self-nature are snipped off so that the Christ-nature can emerge in their place. The more of self that is cut away and removed as a source of motive, attitude, thought, and action, the more room grows within us for the Spirit of Christ to determine motive, attitude, thought, and action.
Again we ask, “But how is self-centeredness thus snipped from that innermost part of us where the source of rule is determined?”
God has provided a divine instrument to carry out this job of cutting away self so that Christ can shine out. It is not, however, a one-man instrument of sanctification, as many suppose, which God wields by himself to carry out the operation. It is no single-handled scalpel that he alone uses to conduct the needful surgery. We can pray the prayer of Christlikeness all our lives and nothing will happen if we simply lay on the operating table and expect God to do all the cutting. Indeed, this is a very different kind of surgery. In this operation, the patient has to help the Physician because the surgical instrument requires two people. It is a double-handled pair of spiritual scissors.
They are the scissors of command and obedience.
How these scissors function—gradually putting self to death, steadily cutting its influence out of motive, attitude, thought, and action—is one of the least-apprehended aspects of the walk of faith. We must wield one handle while God holds the other.
We are not made like Jesus, we must become like Jesus.
This is growth indeed—a growth toward less rather than toward more!
To cut away motives of self, to cut away unkindness, to cut away wrong attitude, to cut away unforgiveness…we must work together with God. He cannot remove them by himself. He has determined that Christlikeness requires an active, not passive, commitment on our part.
To ask which of the two blades is most important, or which actually carries out the “cutting” self-crucifying work, is as pointless as asking which blade of an ordinary pair of scissors actually cuts the cloth. They work together or they don’t work at all.
– Excerpted from pages 29-32 of Make Me Like Jesus by Michael Phillips
Continue Reading: Make Me Like Jesus by Michael Phillips
Are we willing to ask God to make us like Jesus? If status-quo spirituality is for you, do not read this book by best-selling author Michael Phillips. It is a dangerous book to the flesh. The journey toward Christlikeness may be painful and costly. Yet that journey leads to the ultimate purpose God intends for all his children: being made into the image of his son.